1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a microscope apparatus and an image acquisition method.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally known is a microscope that acquires a macro image of a specimen on a glass slide, extracts an area of the specimen in the macro image, divides the area into a plurality of small regions, and acquires high-resolution micro images corresponding to the small regions (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, Publication No. 2007-233093, for example) In this microscope, it is possible to connect the acquired micro images to build a so-called virtual slide in which the entire specimen can be observed with high resolution.
Furthermore, in this microscope, when the micro images are acquired while an in-focus position for the specimen on the glass slide is continuously searched for through automatic focusing, the automated focusing range is limited to a fixed range in order to avoid a failure in automatic focusing. When the in-focus position is out of the fixed range, the automatic focusing operation is stopped.
Specifically, when the specimen exists continuously on the glass slide, the in-focus position is gradually changed in the automatic focusing range, and thus, the in-focus state can always be maintained. However, in some cases, the specimen is scattered on the glass slide, forming a plurality of islands. If there is a difference exceeding the automatic focusing range in the height of the specimen between the islands, due to a fluctuation in the thickness of the glass slide, when the micro-image acquisition region is changed from one island to another island, automatic focusing may result in failure, causing the image to be out of focus and blurred.